Georges Simenon (3rd post): “Round characters,” like alters in multiple personality, are not willfully created by the imagination

A well-known distinction in creative writing is between “round” and “flat” characters. Round characters, like real people, can surprise you. They are not completely predictable.

The reason they may not be predictable is that the author (the regular, “host” personality) didn’t create them, and so they are autonomous (as are the alternate personalities, the alters, in multiple personality).

Like alters, round characters live inside the person (except when they come “out,” because the author “impersonates” them). As Simenon said:

“Maigret [Simenon’s famous detective] lived inside me. I saw him as a flesh-and-blood character, I knew his voice, the smell of his worn sweater, down to the tips of his shoes. He was right there smoking his pipe, waiting, as I slaved away. We had faith in each other” (1, p. 95).

Simenon describes his creative process:

“My existence [as an author] is divided into periods of fifteen days. In each period I compose one [relatively short] novel. On the first day I wander alone, at random. I might run, sit for a while, or walk. I watch the people passing by. I make appointments with my characters, introduce them to one another. I watch. Later, when I go home, I have the ‘starting point’ of my story, the ‘site’ where the action takes place, and the ‘atmosphere.’ That’s all I need. I don’t think about it anymore. I go to bed. I sleep. And dream. My characters grow inside me, without my help. Soon they no longer belong to me: they have lives of their own. The next day and in the days that follow all I have to do is act as their historian…” (1, p. 102).

Thus, Simenon agrees with Mark Twain, who said (as discussed in a past post) that real writers don’t “create” their characters. (They may create their “flat” characters, but not their “round” ones.) Characters just materialize (as they do in multiple personality), sometimes for no apparent reason, but often in response to a particular need or circumstance.

And since characters are not created, they are autonomous, unpredictable, and lifelike, as are alters in multiple personality. Indeed, characters are alternate personalities—literary alters—and novelists have multiple personality.

1. Pierre Assouline. Simenon: A Biography [1992]. Translated by Jon Rothschild. New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1997.